Introduction 1. Woman's Place in Man's Life Cycle 2. Images of Relationship 3. Concepts of Self and Morality 4. Crisis and Transition 5. Women's Rights and Women's Judgment 6. Visions of Maturity References Index of Study Participants General Index

In a Different Voice. Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, MA (Harvard University Press) 1982.

Is human life expectancy approaching its limit? Many--including individuals planning their retirement and officials responsible for health and social policy--believe it is, but the evidence presented in the
 Policy Forum
 suggests otherwise. For 160 years, best-performance life expectancy has steadily increased by a quarter of a year per year, an extraordinary constancy of human achievement. Mortality experts have repeatedly asserted that life expectancy is close to an ultimate ceiling; these experts have repeatedly been proven wrong. The apparent leveling off of life expectancy in various countries is an artifact of laggards catching up and leaders falling behind.

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Broken Limits to Life Expectancy

Research on divorce during the past decade has focused on a range of topics, including the predictors of divorce, associations between divorce and the well-being of children and former spouses, and interventions for divorcing couples. Methodological advances during the past decade include a greater reliance on nationally representative longitudinal samples, genetically informed designs, and statistical models that control for time-invariant sources of unobserved heterogeneity. Emerging perspectives, such as a focus on the number of family transitions rather than on divorce as a single event, are promising. Nevertheless, gaps remain in the research literature, and the review concludes with suggestions for new studies.

Research on Divorce: Continuing Trends and New Developments

1 Introduction.- 2 The Concept of Happiness.- 2/1 The various meanings of the word happiness.- 2/2 Happiness defined.- 2/3 Components of happiness.- 2/4 Adjacent concepts.- 2/5 Synonyms of happiness.- 2/6 Summary.- 3 Can Happiness be Measured?.- 3/1 Validity problems.- 3/2 Reliability problems.- 3/3 Problems of comparison.- 3/4 Summary.- 4 Indicators of Happiness.- 4/1 Indicators of overall happiness.- 4/1.1 Direct questions.- 4/1.2 Indirect questions.- 4/1.3 Ratings by others.- 4/2 Indicators of hedonic level of affect.- 4/2.1 Direct questions.- 4/2.2 Indirect questions.- 4/2.3 Ratings by others.- 4/3 Indicators of contentment.- 4/4 Composites.- 4/5 Do the three kinds of indicators tap different phenomena?.- 4/6 Summary.- 5 Gathering the Available Data.- 5/1 Searching empirical happiness studies.- 5/2 The studies found.- 5/3 Presenting the findings.- 5/4 Limitations of the data.- 5/5 Summary.- 6 Happiness and Living Conditions.- 6/1 Happiness and society.- 6/1.1 Economic conditions.- 6/1.2 Political conditions.- 6/1.3 Peace and war.- 6/1.4 Some regional differences in happiness.- 6/2 Happiness and one's place in society.- 6/2.1 Gender.- 6/2.2 Age-differences.- 6/2.3 Minority status.- 6/2.4 Income.- 6/2.5 Education.- 6/2.6 Occupational prestige.- 6/2.7 Global social rank.- 6/3 Happiness and work.- 6/3.1 Having a job or not.- 6/3.2 Occupation.- 6/3.3 Voluntary work.- 6/4 Happiness and intimate ties.- 6/4.1 Marriage.- 6/4.2 Children.- 6/4.3 Friends and relatives.- 6/5 Summary.- 7 Happiness and Individual Characteristics.- 7/1 Happiness and personal resources.- 7/1.1 Physical health.- 7/1.2 General mental effectiveness.- 7/1.3 Specific abilities.- 7/1.4 Activity level.- 7/1.5 Richness of mental life.- 7/2 Happiness and some personality traits.- 7/2.1 Perceived fate control.- 7/2.2 Defensive strategies.- 7/2.3 Tendencies to like things.- 7/2.4 Time orientation.- 7/3 Happiness and lifestyle.- 7/4 Happiness and longings.- 7/5 Happiness and convictions.- 7/5.1 Happiness and ethical values.- 7/5.2 Religion.- 7/5.3 (Un)-conventionality of outlook.- 7/5.4 Views on happiness.- 7/6 Happiness and appreciations.- 7/6.1 Appreciation of oneself.- 7/6.2 Appreciation of other people.- 7/6.3 Appreciation of society.- 7/6.4 Appreciation of one's social position.- 7/6.5 Appreciation of one's work.- 7/6.6 Appreciation of leisure.- 7/6.7 Appreciation of one's living environment.- 7/6.8 Appreciation of one's health.- 7/6.9 Which global life-aspect-satisfactions are most closely related to happiness?.- 7/7 Summary.- 8 Antecedents of Happiness.- 8/1 Happiness and earlier living conditions.- 8/1.1 Conditions in youth.- 8/1.2 Earlier conditions in adulthood.- 8/2 Happiness and earlier personal characteristics.- 8/3 Summary.- 9 Conclusions.- 9/1 Conditions of happiness.- 9/1.1 Which correlates represent causes?.- 9/1.2 Variations in correlations.- 9/1.3 The correlates in context.- 9/1.4 Some lines for further research.- 9/2 Myths about happiness.- 9/2.1 The myth that modern western society is a sink of unhappiness.- 9/2.2 Myths about things that make for happiness in western societies.- 9/2.3 The myth that living conditions do not matter.- 9/2.4 The myth that happiness is not a significant matter.- References.- Author index.

Conditions for Happiness

Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals suffer serious mental health disparities relative to their heterosexual peers, and researchers have linked these disparities to difficult social experiences (e.g., antigay victimization) and internalized biases (e.g., internalized homophobia) that arouse stress. A recent and growing body of evidence suggests that LGB individuals also suffer physical health disparities relative to heterosexuals, ranging from poor general health status to increased risk for cancer and heightened diagnoses of cardiovascular disease, asthma, diabetes, and other chronic conditions. Despite recent advances in this literature, the causes of LGB physical health problems remain relatively opaque. In this article, we review empirical findings related to LGB physical health disparities and argue that such disparities are related to the experience of minority stress-that is, stress caused by experiences with antigay stigma. In light of this minority stress model, we highlight gaps in the current literature and outline five research steps necessary for developing a comprehensive knowledge of the social determinants of LGB physical health.

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Minority Stress and Physical Health Among Sexual Minorities

Over the 1990–2000 decade happiness in China plummeted despite massive improvement in material living standards. This finding contradicts the notion that income growth at low living standards leads to gains, not losses, in happiness. We explain this puzzle by drawing on a specific version of relative deprivation theory, the concept of “frustrated achievers.” Our major finding is that income inequality in China became increasingly skewed towards the upper income strata, so that related to the average income the financial position of most Chinese worsened. Consequently, financial dissatisfaction rose and became an increasingly important factor in depressing happiness. Other negative feelings emerging with rapid transitions, such as anomie and disaffection, show a less depressive effect on Chinese happiness. We conclude with some speculations about the applicability of our findings to transition economies in general.

The China Puzzle: Falling Happiness in a Rising Economy

In this article, we analyze how the marital biography is affecting mortality in Germany today (N = 12,484). We find support for temporal selection into marriage for both genders, but the effect is stronger for men. In addition, protection through marriage results from long-term accumulation of survival advantages and from the attenuation of higher mortality risks that occur immediately after a transition into or out of a marriage. Moreover, women are more likely to keep survival advantages from previous marriages and to forget about survival disadvantages from divorces and widowhood. Key Words: event history analysis, life course, marital history, marriage, mortality, selectivity. In 1830, Benoisten de Chateauneuf observed a difference in life expectancy between married and unmarried people. Since then, numerous studies have confirmed this result within many countries (Cheung, 2000; Hemstrom, 1996; Hu & Goldman, 1990; Klein, 1993; Lillard & Waite, 1995). Researchers hold two distinct processes responsible for such disparities. The first process is selection into marriage. Various studies have shown that those who find a partner on the marriage market are healthier than those who remain unmarried (Goldman, 1993; Goldman, Korenman, & Weinstein, 1995). The second process refers to the protective mechanism of marriage: Being married provides emotional support, constrains risk-taking behavior, stimulates a healthy lifestyle, provides additional resources, buffers critical experiences, and partly replaces professional health care. Both explanations are highly plausible, but they do not capture an important element of today's family biographies. Men and women are much more likely today to move into and out of different unions over the life course than they were 50 years ago. Most people live without a partner for extensive periods of their adult lives (Settles, 1999). Marital timing patterns influence the wealth of individuals (Wilmoth & Koso, 2002), but what about their effect on health and mortality? Do married men and women preserve their survival advantage over singles, divorced persons, widowers, and widows over their entire life spans? Is a marriage at the age of 40 as protective as a marriage at the age of 20? Is being married for 20 years twice as protective as being married for 10 years? Does a marriage after a previous divorce prolong one's life expectancy by more time than a marriage after a previous widowhood? In this article, we examine the influence of marital changes on mortality throughout the life course. A growing body of literature suggests that early life events (e.g., Barker, 1998; Doblhammer & Vaupel, 2001; Elo & Preston, 1992) and midlife conditions (e.g., Hart, Smith, & Blane, 1998; Manton, Stallard, & Corder, 1997) are important determinants of mortality later in life. All of these studies focus on single life events, but they rarely analyze the consequences of these events. In addition, they often neglect marriage as a factor. In this article, we trace people over long periods of time and focus on key events that shape their marital biographies. Analyzing the chronology of these events should help us to better understand when and why married people have higher life expectancies than do divorced, widowed, or single people. We distinguish four patterns of causation: Timing: The effect of marital transitions may be different if they occur at certain critical junctures of the life course. Accumulation: Some marital states may have positive or negative effects on mortality that accumulate over time. Attenuation: Some marital states may have positive or negative effects on mortality that are lost over time. Sequencing: Some events may have a varying effect on mortality depending on the sequence in which they occur. In this article, we first map the research background of marital transitions and mortality differences. …

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Love and Death in Germany: The Marital Biography and Its Effect on Mortality.

Why is less money spent on health care for the elderly than for the rest of the population? Health care rationing in German hospitals.

https://www.cardi.ie/userfiles/Time%20to%20retire%20-%20Time%20to%20die%20-%20A%20prospective%20cohort%20study%20of%20the%20effects%20of%20early%20retirement%20on%20long-term%20survival%20-%20Soc%20Med%20Sci%202009.pdf

Time to retire – Time to die? A prospective cohort study of the effects of early retirement on long-term survival

Recent trends in German life expectancy show a considerable increase. Most of this increase has resulted from decreasing mortality at older ages. Patterns of oldest old mortality (ages 80+) differed significantly between men and women as well as between East and West Germany. While West German oldest old mortality decreased since the mid 1970s, comparable decreases in East Germany did not become evident until the late 1980s. Yet, the East German mortality decline accelerated after German reunification in 1990, particularly among East German females, attesting to the plasticity of human life expectancy and the importance of late life events. Medical care, individual economic resources and life-style factors are discussed as potential determinants of the decline in old age mortality in Germany. (AUTHORS)

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Hilke Brockmann

Papers

The China Puzzle: Falling Happiness in a Rising Economy

Love and Death in Germany: The Marital Biography and Its Effect on Mortality.

Why is less money spent on health care for the elderly than for the rest of the population? Health care rationing in German hospitals.

Time to retire – Time to die? A prospective cohort study of the effects of early retirement on long-term survival

Old-age mortality in Germany prior to and after reunification